BACKGROUND PAPER
ON
UN HABITAT
BY
AUGUST 2003
I N D E X
SECTION SUBJECT PAGEIntroduction…………………………………………………. 3
Un Habitat Organisation Chart …………………………… 4
1. Overview on Un-Habitat …………………………………. 5-7
2. Organisational Structure…..……………………………… 7-9
3. Executive Director..………………………………………… 9-11
4. Governing Council ………………………………………….. 11-15
5. Programmes …………….…………………………………… 16-66
6. Media & Events …………………………………………...... 66-69
Annexe 1………………………………………………………. 70-74
INTRODUCTION
The agencies of the United Nations system play an essential role supporting work for a more sustainable future for everyone. Stakeholder Forum carries out capacity building to ensure effective stakeholder involvement in enhancing the UN.
Stakeholder Forum works closely with a number of UN Agencies, UNEP, UNDP, UN Habitat and the UN Commission of the Economic and Social Council of the UN.
This report is to enable the members of the Network of Regional Government for Sustainable Development (NRG4SD) to get a better understanding of the work of UN Habitat.
It was complied with information taken from the UN Habitat website.
Aretha Moore, Stakeholder Forum.
Stakeholder Forum for Our Common Future
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1. Overview on UN-HabITAT
Mandate
· The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT, is the United Nations agency for human settlements. It is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all. The main documents outlining the mandate of the organization are the Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements, Habitat Agenda, Istanbul Declaration on Human Settlements, the Declaration on Cities and Other Human Settlements in the New Millennium, and Resolution 56/206
· The agency's 2002-2003 budget is US$300 million and comes from four main sources - 80 per cent in the form of contributions from multilateral and bilateral partners for technical cooperation, 10 percent in earmarked contributions from governments and other partners, including local authorities and foundations, with 5 per cent from the regular UN budget and 5 per cent in the form of voluntary contributions from governments.
History
· In 1978, when Habitat was established, after a meeting in Vancouver known as Habitat I, urbanisation and its impacts were less significant on the agenda of United Nations that had been created over three decades earlier, when two-thirds of humanity was still rural. From 1978 to 1997, with meagre support and an unfocused mandate, Habitat struggled almost alone among multi-lateral organizations to prevent and ameliorate problems stemming from massive urban growth, especially among cities of the developing world.
From 1997 to 2002, by which time half the world had become urban, UN-HABITAT – guided by the Habitat Agenda and the Millennium Declaration – underwent a major revitalisation, using its experience to identify emerging priorities for sustainable urban development and to make needed course corrections.
· In 1996, the United Nations held a second conference on cities, Habitat II, in Istanbul, Turkey to assess two decades of progress since Vancouver and set fresh goals for the new millennium. Adopted by 171 countries, the political document that came out of this “City Summit” is known as the Habitat Agenda and contains over 100 commitments and 600 recommendations.
· On 1 January 2002, the agency’s mandate was strengthened and its status elevated to that of a fully-fledged programme of the UN system in UN General Assembly Resolution A/56/206. (Prior to this it was known as the centre for Human Settlement). Key recommendations and fine tuning of the agenda are now underway as strategy clusters for achieving the urban development and shelter goals and targets of the Millennium Declaration - the United Nations’ development agenda for the next 15 to 20 years. The revitalisation has placed UN-HABITAT squarely in the mainstream of the UN’s development agenda for poverty reduction with a more streamlined and effective structure and staff and more relevant and focused set of programmes and priorities.
It is through this agenda that UN-HABITAT contributes to the overall objective of the United Nations system to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. Its partners range from governments and local authorities to a wide international cross-section of Non-Governmental Organisations and civil society groups.
The Challenge
· The United Nations Millennium Declaration recognises the dire circumstances of the world’s urban poor. It articulates the commitment of Member States to improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020 – Target 11 of Goal No.7 – a task mandated to UN-HABITAT. (The Millennium Declaration was adopted by the UN member states in the year 2000. It contains eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG)[1] ranging from poverty reduction, health, and gender equality to education and environmental sustainability. The MDG detail out 18 specific development targets, each of which has a target figure, a time frame, and indicators designed to monitor to what extend the target has been achieved. The target most closely related to UN-HABITAT's mission is Goal 7 Target 11 to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020.)
· As large as 100 million may seem, however, it is only 10 per cent of the present worldwide slum population, which, if left unchecked, will multiply threefold to 3 billion by the year 2050. The challenge is made more daunting by the fact that, according to UN-HABITAT’s own research, the world’s slum population has already grown by 75 million in barely three years since the Millennium Declaration.
As our towns and cities grow at unprecedented rates setting the social, political, cultural and environmental trends of the world, sustainable urbanisation is one of the most pressing challenges facing the global community in the 21st century. In 1950, one-third of the world’s people lived in cities.
· Just 50 years later, this proportion has risen to one-half and will continue to grow to two-thirds, or 6 billion people, by 2050. Cities are now home to half of humankind. They are the hub for much national production and consumption – economic and social processes that generate wealth and opportunity. But they also create disease, crime, pollution and poverty.
In many cities, especially in developing countries, slum dwellers number more than 50 per cent of the population and have little or no access to shelter, water, and sanitation. This is where UN-HABITAT is mandated to make a difference for the better.
Activities
· UN-HABITAT runs two major worldwide campaigns – the Global Campaign on Urban Governance, and the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure. Through these campaigns and by other means, the agency focuses on a range of issues and special projects which it helps implement.
These include a joint UN-HABITAT/World Bank slum upgrading initiative called the Cities Alliance, promoting effective housing development policies and strategies, helping develop and campaigning for housing rights, promoting sustainable cities and urban environmental planning and management, post-conflict land-management and reconstruction in countries devastated by war or natural disasters. Others take in water and sanitation and solid waste management for towns and cities, training and capacity building for local leaders, ensuring that women’s rights and gender issues are brought into urban development and management policies, helping fight crime through UN-HABITAT’s Safer Cities Programme, research and monitoring of urban economic development, employment, poverty reduction, municipal and housing finance systems, and urban investment. It also helps strengthen rural-urban linkages, and infrastructure development and public service delivery.
· UN-HABITAT also has some 154 technical programmes and projects in 61 countries around the world, most of them in the least developed countries. These include major projects in post-war societies such as Afghanistan, Kosovo, Somalia, Iraq, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to name a few.
The agency’s operational activities help governments create policies and strategies aimed at strengthening a self-reliant management capacity at both national and local levels. They focus on promoting shelter for all, improving urban governance, reducing urban poverty, improving the living environment and managing disaster mitigation and post-conflict rehabilitation.
2. Organisational structure
The Executive Director of UN-HABITAT is United Nations Under Secretary-General, Mrs Anna Tibaijuka. Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, with a team of some 200 international and local staff, the agency has regional offices for Asia and the Pacific in Fukuoka, Japan, for Latin America and the Caribbean in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and for Africa and the Arab States in Nairobi. The regional office for Eastern Europe and Transition Countries is also based in Nairobi.
The agency has three main divisions which each oversee a set of programmes:
The Shelter and Sustainable Human Settlements Development Division coordinates the agency’s global advocacy functions. Its departments are the Shelter Branch which focuses on the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure; the Water, Sanitation and Infrastructure Branch which promotes access to basic services and raises awareness on water and sanitation mainly through the Water for African Cities programme, and the Water for Asian Cities programme; the Training and Capacity Building Branch which helps strengthen local authority and civil society management capacity through training and organisation development; and the Urban Development Branch which runs UN-HABITAT’s Global Campaign on Urban Governance. It also runs the Safer Cities Programme, the Urban Management Programme, the Risk and Disaster Management Programme, and a programme called Localising Agenda 21 which seeks to ensure crucial environmental issues are brought into urban development planning.
The Monitoring and Research Division. Also known as the Urban Secretariat, this division runs three programmes. The Monitoring Systems Branch that keeps a closely documented watch over the conditions of human settlements ranging from rights and policy issues, to the lessons learned through the Best Practices Programme and the Local Leadership Programme; the Policy Analysis, Synthesis and Dialogue Branch, which focuses on enhancing the agency’s policies and produces its two flagship reports; and the Urban Economy and Finance Branch which looks at employment issues in urban areas, especially the informal sector in developing nations, and ways of developing municipal and housing finance systems.
Monitoring
A key function of UN-HABITAT in fulfilling its mandate is the monitoring of global trends and conditions and the assessment of progress in implementing the Habitat Agenda at the international, regional, national and local levels.
The monitoring function is done through two main instruments:
Global Urban Observatory and Statistics and Best Practices. By working at all levels and with all relevant stakeholders and partners, the agency contributes to linking policy development and capacity-building activities with a view to promoting cohesive and mutually reinforcing social, economic and environmental policies. On the request from the Human Settlements Commission the agency has devised a monitoring system.
The UN-HABITAT monitoring system has three main components:
The Statistics Programme which regularly collects data from member countries and cities
The Urban Indicator Programme which regularly collects indicators from more than 200 cities
The Best Practices Programme, which has compiled over 1,100 best practice cases in 600 cities
The agency is participating in tracking Millennium Declaration goals by providing 4 indicators and slum index based on them for Goal 7, target 11. Those indicators are:
· Percentage of people with access to sanitation
· Percentage of people with access to safe water
· Percentage of people with secure tenure
· Percentage of people in permanent housing/dwelling
The Regional and Technical Cooperation Division responsible for implementing the agency’s technical cooperation programmes and projects around the world. It oversees the regional offices.
Oversight
Every two years, the agency’s work and relationships with its partners are examined in detail by Governing Council. It is a high-level forum of governments at which guidelines and its budget are established for the next two-year period.
This Governing Council then reports back to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) which coordinates the work of all the United Nations 14 specialised agencies. The governments have representatives in Nairobi with whom senior agency officials meet regularly throughout the year in the Committee of Permanent Representatives (CPR).
3. Executive Director
Mrs Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka
Mrs Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka was appointed The Executive Director of UN-HABITAT in September 2000.
A Tanzanian national, Mrs Tibaijuka holds a Doctorate of Science in Agricultural Economics from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala. Prior to joining Habitat, Mrs Tibaijuka was the Special Coordinator for Least Developed Countries, Landlocked and Small Island Developing Countries at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
In this role, Mrs Tibaijuka was responsible for strengthening the capacity of LDCs in trade negotiations with the World Trade Organisation.
From 1993 to 1998, when she joined UNCTAD, Mrs. Tibaijuka was Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Dar-es-Salaam. During this period she was also a member of the Tanzanian Government delegation to several United Nations Summits including the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Istanbul, 1996); the World Food Summit (Rome 1996); the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing 1995) and the World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995).
At these conferences, Mrs Tibaijuka was an active member of the Civil Society and NGO Forums. At the World Food Summit in Rome, she was elected Coordinator for Eastern Africa in the Network for Food Security, Trade and Sustainable Development (COASAD). Mrs Tibaijuka has also been a Board Member of UNESCO's International Scientific Advisory Board since November 1997.
Dedicated to the role, and rights, of women in development, Mrs. Tibaijuka is the founding Chairperson of the Tanzanian National Women's Council (BAWATA), an independent, non-politically aligned, organisation advocating for women's rights to land, inheritance and social services.